A Different Forever

Chapter one~ A Second Beginning

After a lifetime spent wishing for a family, a young orphan awakens as Isabella Swan. Faced with an impossible second chance, she chooses not to fear the story ahead—but to embrace the parents, friendships, and love she believes are waiting for her.

The first thing I heard was singing.

It drifted through the wall in bright, careless pieces—half a verse, a few hummed notes, then a laugh when the singer forgot the words. A cabinet closed downstairs. Something metal struck the floor. A man called out a warning, and the woman answered with complete confidence that she had everything under control.

The smoke detector began to shriek.

"Mostly under control!" she amended.

My eyes opened.

Sunlight spilled through narrow blinds and lay in warm golden stripes across a room I had never seen before.

I stared at the ceiling.

The fan above me turned in slow, lazy circles. Warm air brushed my face, carrying the faint scent of laundry detergent, old paper, and something burning downstairs.

This was not my room.

My room had been a cramped studio with a stained ceiling, a rattling air conditioner, and one window facing the brick wall of the next building. There had been no singing in the mornings. No one laughing in the kitchen. No one close enough to care whether I woke up at all.

I pushed myself upright too quickly.

The room tilted.

Long brown hair fell over my shoulders and into my face.

I froze.

My hair had never been this long.

I caught a handful of it and stared at the unfamiliar strands lying across my palm. My hand was different too—slender, pale, the nails short and unpainted. There was a small crescent-shaped scar near the base of my thumb that I had never seen before.

My heartbeat quickened.

Across the room, a narrow mirror hung from the closet door.

I climbed out of bed, but my feet tangled in the sheet. I stumbled forward and caught the dresser before I could fall. My knees struck the wood hard enough to hurt.

The pain was sharp and immediate.

Not a dream, then.

I raised my head.

A girl stared back at me.

She was pale and slender, with long mahogany-brown hair tangled from sleep. Her features were delicate without being fragile, and her wide brown eyes looked enormous in a face drained of color.

I knew her.

I had seen that face described across pages and portrayed on a screen. I had imagined forests through her eyes, danger at her back, and impossible golden eyes fixed upon her.

My gaze jerked toward the corkboard above the desk.

Photographs covered it. The same brunette girl stood beside a beautiful, bright-eyed woman in nearly every one. Desert landscapes stretched behind them. In another photograph, a quiet man with a dark mustache held a much younger version of the girl on his shoulders beneath a gray Washington sky.

Beside the pictures rested a plane ticket.

The name printed across it turned the strange suspicion inside me into certainty.

ISABELLA MARIE SWAN.

"Bella," I whispered.

Her voice came out of my mouth.